Metals Tech

With warmer weather here, you’re likely going to be spending a lot more time outdoors. This LuminAID PackLite Max 2-in-1 Phone Charger can help you get more out of that outdoor time. It’s a portable light source that recharges via solar power or through your phone.

The LuminAID PackLite inflates in just seconds, so you can use it to illuminate your campsite or the beach ahead or wherever it is that you’re enjoying the outdoors. It features turbo, high, medium, low, and flashing settings, and includes a powerful 2,000mAh battery that can recharge most cell phones to 100%.

All you need to do to recharge it is plug in the micro USB or place it in direct sunlight. Plus, it’s all-weather proof — you can even float it on a body of water. Ensure you have a safe light and power source before your next outdoor adventure. Usually, this LuminAID PackLite Max 2-in-1 Phone Charger is $50, but you can get it now for $34.99.

As electronic devices keep shrinking, scientists are faced with challenges to re-design batteries that can fit into tinier spaces without losing any capacity. Researchers in the United States have used novel techniques to come up with a solution – a powerful 3D lithium ion battery that possesses a footprint about the size of 100 grains of salt.

“For small sensors, you need to re-design the battery to be like a skyscraper in New York instead of a ranch house in California,” says Professor Bruce Dunn, senior author and a professor of materials science and engineering at UCLA.

The most modern 2D batteries are restricted in the shapes they’ll take. They are basically a piece of anode and a piece of cathode with an ion-conducting electrolyte in between them.

On the other hand, a 3D anode and a 3D cathode, separated by a tiny amount of electrolyte, can be designed in numerous ways. Prof. Dunn and his colleagues chose a layout called “concentric-tube” design. In this setup, the scientists used a thin layer of a photo-patternable polymer electrolyte to uniformly cover an arrangement of evenly spaced anode posts. They filled the region between the posts with the cathode material.

While in theory, this may look like a straightforward approach, many previous researchers were able to build only half a 3D battery by making self-stable anodes and cathodes. However, when assembled, they could not perform as a functional battery. Furthermore, the majority of the 3D batteries that worked, failed to display remarkable improvement over the simple 2D varieties.

To make their new batteries work, the researchers used methods that are usually applied in semiconductors for their anode. They shaped silicon into a grid of evenly-spaced cylinders. Next, they applied thin layers of the polymer electrolyte to the silicon shape. Finally, they poured in a standard lithium-ion cathode material, using the anode as a mold to confirm that the two halves would snap together perfectly.

The final product?

The newly developed battery showed off an energy density of 5.2 milliwatt hours per square centimeter. This was among the highest energy density reported for a 3D battery. Additionally, it occupied a footprint of just 0.09 square centimeters and held off 100 cycles of charging and discharging.

Dunn says that this particular battery hasn’t yet reached its full capacity; he hopes that further tuning will boost energy density. He says that packaging is another challenge faced by batteries – they need to be sealed up, kept small, and at the same time make sure they work as good here and now as in the glove box.

At the Chemnitz University of Technology, another first has been achieved: researchers from the Professorship of Electrical Energy Conversion Systems and Drives have created the first fully 3D printed electric motor. Last year, two members of the Professorship, Johannes Rudolph and Fabian Lorenz, 3D printed a coil capable of withstanding temperatures over 300°C. In the time since then, they have 3D printed all of the components of an electric machine. That includes copper electrical conductors, which create magnetic fields in combination with iron or iron alloys and ceramic electrical insulation to insulate the conductors from each other and from the iron components. This is referred to as the magnetic circuit.

Our goal over the last two and a half years was to dramatically increase the temperature that electrical machines are capable of withstanding,” said Dr. Ralf Werner, head of the Professorship.

The researchers achieved this goal by replacing conventional polymer-based insulation materials with specialized ceramics, which have a much higher degree of temperature resistance.

The maximum permissible winding temperature of 220°C associated with conventional insulation systems can then be exceeded by a significant amount,” said Rudolph. “The operating temperature of electric machines is therefore only limited by the ferromagnetic properties of the iron components, which can only be maintained up to 700°C.”

The ceramic insulation material also has a higher degree of thermal conductivity, so heat loss generated in the conductors can be more quickly dissipated. This allowed the researchers to increase the output density of electrical machines.

Despite the process-related decrease in the conductivity of the copper used, in specific application scenarios, it is possible to increase the degree of efficiency by significantly reducing the winding temperature,” said Lorenz.

The 3D printing process that the researchers developed for the motor involves the extrusion of viscous pastes which consist of particles of iron, copper or ceramics as well as specially-adapted bonding agents. The 3D printed part is then sintered, which burns away the binder and fuses the metallic or ceramic materials together.

The special strength of the 3D multi-material process lies in the possibility of using several materials simultaneously during a printing process,” the researchers explained. “For example, electrically conductive structures made of copper can be printed together with their insulation. This is made of ceramic materials that are superior to conventional organic insulating materials made of plastic in many physical properties such as heat resistance or thermal conductivity. In this way, electric coils can be produced with significantly higher temperature resistance. In combination with ferromagnetic materials such as iron, moreover, it is possible to manufacture entire electrical machines or their components in one printing operation.”

To achieve the necessary degree of precision when extruding the pastes, the researchers worked closely with ViscoTec Pumpen- u. Dosiertechnik GmbH.

The motor that was printed in the Chemnitz University Laboratory represents a breakthrough and is at the same time the proof of principle – it demonstrates the feasibility – of our technology,” said Rudolph.

Rudolph and Lorenz plan to start a university spin-off company based on the technology. The researchers presented their work at Hannover Messe, which took place from April 23rd to the 27th.

Electric motors are the beating heart of any electric vehicle, and thanks to a startup in Belgium, your next EV’s motor could be stronger, smaller and more efficient. Magnax is hard at work developing new axial flux motors for use in EVs and other applications that require powerful yet lightweight motors. This could mean faster, lighter and generally more awesome electric cars and motorcycles, among other new developments.

Axial flux motors are a major improvement over standard radial flux motors, which leave a significant amount of copper overhanging on the ends of the coils. In radial flux motors, any copper not perpendicular to the magnet’s rotation is essentially wasted.

Axial flux motors, on the other hand, offer the lowest possible copper loss. This translates to higher efficiency. In other words, more of the battery power gets turned into useful motor power.

These axial flux motors are also more efficient due to their intrinsically enhanced cooling. Because the coils can be pressed directly against the exterior motor case, they can cool much faster than in radial flux motors, which must transfer the coil heat through the stator of the motor.

Magnax has a few other innovations that they are working into their motors as well. Instead of standard round wire for their copper coils, Magnax is using rectangular cross-section wire to pack more copper into the same space, resulting in a copper fill of up to 90%.

They also employ a yokeless stator, which provides the shortest possible flux path, as well as using grain-oriented steel, which they claim can reduce the core losses by as much as 85%.

Ok, that sounds nice and all, but what are these fancy tech specs good for?

What this all adds up to is a motor that can be insanely light compared to the amount of power it produces. Magnax claims their axial flux motors can reach up to 15 kW/kg peak, or 7.5 kW/kg nominal (9 hp/lb peak, or 4.5 hp/lb nominal).

But power means nothing if you can’t keep the motor cool. With the improved cooling capacity of axial flux motors, Magnax’s new motors will be able to provide higher power for longer, resulting in better performing vehicles.

According to the company:

This is our way of contributing to a sound environment for our children. Magnax enables industrial innovation with axial flux motor and generator technology that outperforms in efficiency, weight, reliability, and cost-effectiveness. Magnax supports the global transition to fully renewable power generation, electric transportation and ultra-efficient machines by innovating in next-generation electric motor and generator technology.

Magnax is already preparing to debut their first prototype motors by the end of this year, with a stated goal of an unveiling in October.

The prototype motor will be a 275 mm (10.8 inch) diameter motor weighing 22.5 kg (50 lb) and capable of between 300 to 408 kW (400-550 hp) of power. They are also developing a smaller 7 kg (15.4 lb) version of the same motor with a diameter of 185 mm (7.2 inches) and peak power output of 84 kW (113 hp).  The company is envisioning the use of these motors in everything from electric motorcycles and vehicles to electric aircraft, and even in large wind turbines when used as generators.

Tesla has recently deployed several very large energy storage projects, but a new one could apparently dwarf them all.

There was an important detail that came out of Tesla’s Q1 conference call but was mostly overlooked: Elon Musk teased a potential giant 1 GWh energy storage project, which would make it the biggest in the world by a wide margin, to be announced soon.

We published plenty of articles about the things that came out of the conference call, but I forgot about that particular comment until Galileo Russel reminded me of it during our podcast this week.

When Russel asked Musk about the impact of bringing online the giant 129 MWh Powerpack project in South Australia, the CEO answered:

“I think it had quite a profound effect. South Australia took a chance on doing the world’s biggest battery,and it’s worked out really well. If you read the articles, it worked out far beyond their expectations because the battery is able to respond at the millisecond level – far faster than any hydrocarbon plant. So, its grid stabilization was much greater actually than even a gas turbine plant, which normally respond quite fast.

Musk is referring to the grid services that the battery pack has been performing for the South Australian grid.

As we previously reported, the giant battery system made around $1 million in just a few days back in January though frequency response and it is already eating away at ‘gas cartel’s’ profits, according to a recent report.

Like Musk mentioned, it is proving to be much more efficient than the hydrocarbon peaker plants that the grid operators generally use to stabilize the grid.

But the question was about how it is impacting demand, so Musk continued:

The utilities that we’ve worked eith thus far have really loved the battery pack and I feel confident that we’ll be able to announce a deal at the gigawatt-hour scale within a matter of months. So, it’s 1,000-megawatt-hours…”

That comment is extremely important, but it sort of fell through the cracks.

Musk is talking about an upcoming announcement of a giant energy storage project several times bigger than anything that has ever been done before.

A project of that scale would be quite revolutionary. Tesla could already beat its own record with another Powerpack project with Neoen in Australia, but it’s still not at the gigawatt-hour scale.

The company’s project to install Powerwalls and solar power on 50,000 homes to create the biggest virtual power plant in the world could come close in total energy capacity, but it’s still not quite there yet either.

The only project that comes to mind is Xcel Energy’s plan for a massive energy storage system in Colorado. We already reported that Tesla bid on the project with a 75 MW/300 MWh Powerpack system, which would be the biggest in the world, but other companies have bid with 1 GWh projects.

Tesla could have potentially updated its bid to bring it up to scale.

Electrek’s Take

When Musk first announced ‘Tesla Energy’ and unveiled the Powerwall and Powerpack in 2015, he said that those energy solutions are modular and could technically be deployed in gigawatt-hour scale projects in the future, but I don’t think people thought that that future would be just 3 years away.

Lithium-ion energy storage projects have already come a long way during those 3 years, but I think a project of this size would still shock many people.

It will undoubtedly require a significant increase in production capacity at Gigafactory 1.

U.S. cities have started to show some enthusiasm for electric buses. New York City is trialing electric models as part of a larger bid to reduce emissions. And last month, Los Angeles announced it will spend $36.1 million on electric buses, part of the city’s far-reaching plan to transition to a zero-emission fleet by 2030.

LA joins other cities making big plans to adopt electric buses, which run quieter and cleaner and reduce urban carbon emissions, including London and Paris, which pledged to go electric by 2025.

Then, there’s China, and the city of Shenzhen. The 12.5 million-person metropolis made headlines last year as the first to operate an all-electric bus system. It’s a significant achievement, especially considering the size of the city’s fleet, which totals 16,359 vehicles, more than the combined number operating in New York City, LA, Toronto, New Jersey, and Chicago.

Shenzhen has become the poster child of China’s electric bus push. With 385,000 electric buses, the country has 99 percent of the world’s electric buses, and currently adds 9,500 zero-emission buses every five weeks, equivalent to London’s entire bus fleet.

China’s rapid embrace of the new technology, which has gone from fringe to forward-thinking in under a decade, shows the potential of the country’s centrally controlled policy process. According to a new analysis by the World Resources Institute (WRI), China, and specifically Shenzhen, bet big on a holistic approach, which has created a transit and industrial ecosystem that’s vaulted the country far ahead of the rest of the world.

“Shenzhen is the first city, but it won’t be the last,” says Sebastian Castellanos, who studies low-emission transport for the WRI. “China has a lot of air quality issues, but so do cities everywhere. Electric buses are something that will definitely happen [globally].”

Building an ecosystem for electric buses

Shenzhen, the second-largest city in the Pearl River delta, has a rapidly growing metro system, like most Chinese cities. According to Lulu Xue, a WRI research associate and co-author of the report who lives in China, a majority of the city’s commuters are what’s called captive riders, those whose lower income makes buses the only real option.

That means buses are still very prevalent, as well as a big contributor to pollution and poor air quality. Even the small number of diesel buses left an outsized cloud of pollution, accounting for a half-a-percent of the total vehicles but 20 percent of the fleet’s pollution.

Shenzhen was able to rapidly switch over its bus fleet due to investment at multiple levels of government.

“Other Chinese cities are working on electric buses on a transit planning level,” Xue says. “In Shenzhen, this move has been directed by the mayor’s office.”

The Chinese government made buying new buses easy with a massive $150,000 subsidy, roughly half the cost of a new bus. While that definitely makes it easier to invest in clean technology, WRI studies found that electric buses, due to cheaper operating and maintenance costs, still end up being cheaper than standard buses over the lifetime of each vehicle.

The city invested in a system of charging terminals for buses, an infrastructure expansion that was coordinated with bus manufacturers and the local utility system. By adding thousands of charging stations—which can also be used by private drivers—while also focusing on buses with a better battery life, Shenzhen officials were able to flip the system to electric vehicles without needing to alter routes.

According to Xue’s calculations, while the buses have a higher upfront cost—usually 2 to 4 times more per vehicle—the savings on fuel and maintenance are substantial. She estimates the newer electric models have one-third of the operation and maintenance cost of a standard diesel bus.

The electric fleet also helped the city meet its air-quality goals in both 2016 and 2017, and reduced the need for diesel fuel. For every 1,000 battery-powered buses in operation, the country needs 500 fewer barrels of diesel fuel, according to calculations by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

This collaboration between industry and transit officials, an ecosystem of development, positions Shenzhen and China for continued technological advancement. It’s given Chinese manufacturers extensive experience—and expertise in battery and vehicle development.

Can other countries ever catch up?

The United States lags far behind on electric buses, but Castellanos says there’s still hope the U.S. can accelerate the turnover to greener mass transit.

Companies like Proterra, a manufacturer of electric buses in the U.S., have really focused on the local market. And, as noted before, U.S. cities are starting to plan for and purchase electric buses. But, to really commit to the shift, the U.S. needs to see more federal support.

“If that’s not in place, it’s really hard to catch up,” says Castellanos. “In China, it’s not just public transportation policy; it’s an all-around ecosystem receiving federal support.”

While other cities try to catch up, Shenzhen doesn’t plan to sit still. According to Xue, the city’s next goal is to electrify its entire taxicab system by 2020.